Far-right Austrian protest vote met by EU silence

Sunday’s election victory of two anti-foreigner, anti-EU parties in Austria has mostly been greeted with silence by EU and member state officials. In one of the best parliamentary results ever for the hard right in an EU member state, Heinz-Christian Strache’s Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) received 18% of the votes, and Jörg Haider’s Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZÖ), a slightly more moderate splinter group, 11%. The result was widely seen as a protest, after less than two years, against the dysfunctional grand coalition of the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ, which obtained 29.7%) and the conservative People’s Party (ÖVP, 25.6%).

Contrasting reaction

The silence of Austria’s EU partners contrasts with the EU’s reaction in February 2000 before the ÖVP included the FPÖ, then led by Jörg Haider, as a junior partner in government. The other 14 member states (as there then were) suspended bilateral relations with Vienna for more than six months, and Louis Michel, then Belgium’s foreign minister, suggested that Austria could be expelled from the Union. A spokesperson for the current French presidency of the EU said on Tuesday (30 September) that there was no reason to issue a statement commenting on a fully democratic election in an EU member state.

Three possibilities for forming a new government are being explored: a new edition of the grand coalition of Conservatives and Social Democrats; a coalition of ÖVP and the two rightist parties; and an SPÖ minority government.

ÖVP leader Wilhelm Molterer’s resignation from his party post on 29 September, in favour of agriculture minister Josef Pröll, removes one obstacle to a renewed grand coalition, namely the poor personal relationship between Molterer and SPÖ leader Werner Faymann. It was Molterer who ended the grand coalition when he stepped before the national media on 7 July and said, “It’s enough.” Pröll, by contrast, was his party’s co-ordinator for coalition relations; his Social Democratic counterpart was Werner Faymann, who on the day of the poll reached out to the ÖVP. A new government, however, is probably still weeks away.

Many in the EU will have mixed feelings about a government headed by Faymann, who, as leader of the single largest party, has the best chance of being asked to form a new government. Earlier this year, Faymann teamed up with Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer to effect a U-turn on Europe: just weeks after parliament had ratified the Lisbon treaty, in April, the two said that similar changes in the future would require a popular referendum, provoking Molterer’s ire.